As the Year 2025 Ends

The thing about New Year's Eve is that it allows you to say farewell to the previous year - 2025 - while greeting the incoming year - 2026 - with a certain level of cheer and optimism. 

So the best I can say about 2025 - all of the damage and disaster and human rights violations and destruction of national norms (and buildings) - is "What that trip really necessary?"

And the best I can say about going into 2026 is "Are we all ready to fight our way out of the bullshit storm trump and his lackeys are about to overwhelm us with, as they escalate their war on everyone who's not Rich, White, and Male?" 

I don't have much optimism or cheer this evening. I do have resolve and a willingness to stand up for myself and others when the Far Right thugs are going to come for everything - our freedoms, our communities, our love of people - that makes us true Americans.

Come at us, 2026. We're not going anywhere without a fight.

Four For the Fourth: Friction In the Air

(Here's the second article in this 2025 Four For the Fourth)

You say you want a revolution?

You want to stand up against the growing fascism of the trumpian regime?

You might want to watch Star Wars Andor series to get in the proper mindset then (via Derek Pharr at Nerdist):

Andor doesn’t just sideline the Jedi, it reframes the entire rebellion without them. There’s no Force and no Midichlorians. No elegant solutions from a more civilized age. Just people. Flawed, desperate, courageous people, who decide that enough is enough. The result is the most grounded, morally complex, and weirdly hopeful take on resistance the franchise has ever given us. Andor isn’t just “what if Star Wars was prestige TV?” It’s a reevaluation of who actually fought the Empire and a reminder that revolutions are won by the people who show up, not the ones meditating about it...

Let’s start with an uncomfortable truth: the Jedi failed. Not metaphorically. Not in a “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” way. They were spectacularly bad at their jobs. While Palpatine engineered a fascist takeover in broad daylight, the Jedi were too busy pontificating about balance to notice the galaxy was slipping into totalitarianism. Their detachment wasn’t just a quirk of their order. It was their fatal flaw.

Andor doesn’t waste time pointing fingers at them. It simply moves on. The Jedi aren’t mentioned, and frankly they aren’t missed. What replaces them isn’t another elite class of heroes. Instead, it’s working-class people, loners, bureaucrats, and ex-cons who decide to resist in whatever way they can. There’s no talk of prophecy or destiny in Andor. No one’s “the chosen one.” They’re just the ones who showed up.

Through two seasons, the show set up the path of Cassian Andor from youthful dispossessed jungle child into one of the Rebel Alliance fighters who uncover the secret plans that reveal the (engineered) weak spot of the dreaded superweapon Death Star. While the movie Rogue One already spelled out Cassian's fate, the show takes the time to show how and why he stood up against a massive Empire in spite of the overwhelming odds.

Cassian evolves from regular thief stealing Imperial ship parts in a way the government's intelligence agency - the ISB - couldn't identify with any pattern, into a minor participant of a bank robbery to fund the fledging Alliance that sparks an ISB crackdown on galactic civil liberties that underscores the banal cruelty of that regime. Cassian gets imprisoned and forced into a labor facility understaffed and overtly brutal, making it clear how evil and sadistic the Empire is (the side story of Cassian's friends getting tortured and killed adds to that sadism). Aiding in a mass breakout of the prison, Cassian makes his way back to his Alliance handlers and - after listening to an earnest and meaningful manifesto from an early Rebel intellectual (one who died in that bank robbery and ironically so minor a figure in the Alliance even the ISB can't identify him) - actively signs on to the fight.

Interwoven into Andor's narrative are the characters many Star Wars know will be major players in the Rebellion - Senator Mom Mothma for example, destined to denounce the Emperor's cruelty on the Senate Floor and the pure leader around which the Alliance will form - underscoring how the tides of history against oppression are inevitable. Intermixed are incredibly moving monologue's - Nemik's Manifesto is just the first - from others drawn into the fight - like Kino Loy's call to fight to break open the Imperial prisons and Luthen Rael's speech about his emotional sacrifices "I fight to make a sunrise I know I will never see" - that could stir any soul into rebellion.

Towards the end of Season Two, another major Star Wars player gets a monologue of his own, when Saw Guerra - a resistance fighter from the Clone Wars turned violent insurrectionist - explains his motivations to a new recruit (Cassian's young friend from Season One Wilmon). It's one of the most stirring and unsettling calls to fight in television history.

Saw Gerrera: There it is.

(Approaches rhydonium fumes and inhales)

Wilmon: (horrified) What are you doing?

Gerrera: (to the fumes) I have always loved you.

Wilmon: How can you do that?

Gerrera: (turns to face Wilmon) Because I understand it. Because she's my sister, rhydo, and she loves me. That itch... that burn... You feel how badly she wants to explode? (taps Wilmon's shoulders) Remember this. Remember this moment! This... perfect night. 

(Pauses, sees Wilmon's terror)

Gerrera: You think I'm crazy. (smiles) Yes, I am. Revolution is not for the sane. Look at us: Unloved, hunted, cannon fodder. We'll all be dead before the Republic is back and yet... here we are. 

(Pauses again, grabs Wilmon's shoulders harder) 

Gerrera: Where are you, boy? You're here. You're not with Luthen, you're here! You're RIGHT HERE and you're READY to fight!

(Wilmon's eyes go from fear to understanding. He willingly removes his mask to inhale the fumes, breathes deeply, coughing)

Gerrera: We're the ryhdo, kid. We're the fuel. We're the thing that explodes when there's too much friction in the air. 

(Wilmon's gasps and chokes as he accepts his fate with the Rebellion)

Gerrera: Let it in, boy. That's freedom calling! (laughing mad) Let it in! Let it RUN! Let it run WILD!

If you've watched the whole Star Wars storyline from the prequels to the Clone Wars animated series to here, you'll know Gerrera's backstory and how he lost his sanity: fighting first the Separatists that enslaved him and killed his sister, and then the Empire when the Republic fell. And yes if you're wondering, Saw Gerrera talks and acts a lot like his real-world model Che Guevara because the series storyrunners wanted a more violent yet charismatic rebel leader to highlight the more nobler goals of the main Alliance the fans already recognized. 

In that speech, Gerrera speaks to the revolutionary as an unloved fighter, romanticized as Margaret Killjoy puts it in her blog: 

I think a lot about the romanticization of suffering. When I lived in a van, it wasn’t because I wanted hashtag vanlife, it was because I had almost no money and I wanted somewhere dry to sleep and a way to get from place to place to keep doing activist work. I hated the romanticization of van life, the pristine photos of perfect beaches and fifty thousand dollar vans...

Eventually, after years, I moved into an off-grid barn, and slowly saved up the money to build a 12x12’ A-frame off-grid cabin on my friend’s property. From vanlife to tiny house. All the things you’re supposed to romanticize.

A tiny house is only an improvement if you’re coming from no-house, if you ask me. Most people are not happier living off grid. Most people are not happier living in their vehicles.

But if it’s what you have, it’s useful to find beauty in it. It’s useful to romanticize it. Some nights in the van, with the wind whipping through the trees, I was happy. Some summer days in the hammock in front of my cabin, I was happy.

When two revolutionaries, caught up in the ethical imperative to overthrow the galactic empire, start huffing fumes and waxing poetic about their perfect night of crime, they are making the right decision. If you’re going to die before you see your revolution succeed, might as well make the most of it. Might as well fill your brief life with as much meaning as you can possibly cram into it...

There’s this old book, Catechism of a Revolutionary, from 1869. It’s by this Russian nihilist named Sergey Nechayev. People get pretty hooked on this book sometimes. It’s intoxicating. The revolutionary is a doomed man, it says, right in its first sentence... 

According to the catechism, essentially anything is justifiable in the name of revolution. It was written in a time of tsars, less than a decade after the end of serfdom, and during a period where a lot of people were trying awfully hard to find a way to turn the tsar from one full-size person into a bunch of tiny little pieces of person, generally through the application of explosives. Which is, of course, a reasonable thing to do to autocrats.

But it’s worth understanding that the guy who wrote this book, Nechayev, was a piece of shit. That’s the technical term for it I think. Not just “he was so devoted to revolution that he was callous with people,” but just aggressively a bad person who, by my read, was rather detrimental to the movement he claimed to love...

I don’t have a high opinion of Catechism of a Revolutionary, nor of its author. It seems written to excuse a man doing whatever he wants (including imprisoning the woman who turned him down).

Yet when Saw Gerrera talks about “this perfect night,” I think about the pure beauty that can be found in an anti-police riot, when you and others make it clear that you will not accept to be ruled by unaccountable men with guns. Sometimes, you need to shout “fuck you” at the bastards and mean it. You need to shout “you are my enemies” and mean it. Sometimes you need to say “what are you going to do, kill me?” and know that they might, well, kill you, but that it needed to be said anyway.

You don't have to be as violent or terrible as the likes of Saw, or Che, or Nechayev. As much as they speak to the spirit of revolution, the power of pure resistance is more attainable. 

Be that fuel, that friction in the air. Just keep the struggle going. Be the signal, the call to action. Be free in the perfect moments.

Try.

It's Cinco De Mayo Time 2025!

Just a quick note or three about CINCO DE MAYO this 2025:

Find yourself in sunny Minot North Dakota!!

Head out to Herbert's Taco Hut!

Get yourself a taco!

Aim both middle fingers in the general direction of donald Racist Orange Shitgibbon trump!

And Celebrate the Battle of Puebla as General Zaragoza intended!!!

P.S. more blogging to follow this Monday. brb.

Get Yer Hands Off Us, trump and Musk

So today there was an organized national protest opposing trump/Musk's attacks on our federal infrastructure and our legal migrants called Hands Off, and a local event in nearby Lakeland FL was on the calendar for 1:00 PM so I decided to contribute with my presence for an hour.

Parking downtown was intriguingly tight today, so by that metric turnout seemed pretty good. I've seen the videoclips of the marches in the major cities like New York City, Washington DC, Boston, Chicago, and... is that Salt Lake City? Did someone get video from Anchorage by any chance?

It's nice to witness that there's still more Americans siding with you against the corruption and stupidity of the trump regime. It'd just be nicer if the f-cking mainstream media will recognize that these anti-trump protests are bigger and better organized than those staged tea party ragefests the billionaires set up during Obama's tenure. /sigh

Anywho, here's a few photos and videos I took at the Lakeland rally.

I should have made a sign that noted NO ONE VOTED 4 ELON but I didn't think to do so, alas.

I hope your protests went well today.

Keep fighting.

Everybody Hold On Tight Election Day 2024 Edition

Update: Goddammit.

This is what we know going into Election Day this November 5th.

There is a gender gap in the voting trends, with more women showing up to vote than men.

There is a Dobbs Effect, where a number of deeply-held Republican states are seeing a massive shift of votes towards Democratic candidates and pro-abortion state referenda after the Dobbs ruling in 2022 allowed those Republican states to enact harsh anti-abortion laws. What we don't know is how massive those shifts will be and if they will flip enough Red states Blue.

There will be a harsh rebuke from Latino voters - especially Puerto Rican voters - towards Republicans in key battleground states Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Florida. When you have 85 percent of Puerto Ricans telling pollsters they're siding with Harris, that's a huge voting bloc numbering hundreds of thousands in each state giving Democrats advantages in places that were decided by mere thousands of votes.

The governors and Attorneys General in some of the Red states are going to do everything they can to block federal officials from the Justice Department to oversee vote counting, because they dare not let honest tallying take place. So we know the Republicans are going to try and disenfranchise voters they don't like as much as possible.

trump will claim he's winning in every state, and then when a state's counting starts shifting to Harris he will scream "Stop the Steal" and that there's mass voter fraud in that state. Then again, he did this LAST time during the 2020 count, and he threatened to do it in 2016 before that election, so this was going to happen anyway. trump can never admit he's losing.

What people should know going into tomorrow's election: When you get in line before the polls close, STAY IN LINE. It helps to get there as early as possible. Bring your own bottle of water or something because some of the Republican-controlled states banned people from providing drinks and health aid for people stuck in long lines.

If some Proud Boy asshole challenges your right to vote, defend your vote (and see if the precinct security guard can charge that SOB for election interference). If a poll worker challenges your right to vote, demand a provisional ballot. Bring a friend - go with a group of neighbors or family members who can vote at that precinct with you - so you won't be alone and easy to intimidate.

Do be prepared for the craziest election day our nation's ever seen: Crazier than 1968, more chaotic than 1876, and - oh gods, help us - probably more violent than anything (and it's shocking how many violent elections - at least at the local level - we've had).

Stay safe. Use your power to vote. And here's hoping for a strong Blue Wave to wash trump and his criminal ways from our land.

What If: the 2024 President Election Is an Honest-to-God Harris Landslide

Update: All of this was wrong. All of this was a lie. All of America is fucked up, don't tell me otherwise.

I'm still thinking about that USA Today report about early voting where Kamala Harris has a 63 percent lead in the ballots over trump's anemic 34 percent (with the difference going to third parties, natch).

Given how most of the modern - at least 21st Century - Presidential elections were not so heavily favored either way - balancing between 52-47 percent or closer - seeing THAT huge of a lead is stunning (and stirring up way too much hope for my own good, I admit it).

Logic dictates that the early voting is not a full representation of the likely voter turnout for this cycle. We're barely at a quarter of expected turnout - although with a week to go the numbers will go up - and more than half of the voters tend to wait until Election Day (some because they're still undecided, many because it's kinda traditional) anyway. We should expect a downward shift on that percentage lead to where the voting share fits the trends of a closer (say 55-45) election result.

We could be looking at the likelihood that a large number of Democratic - or Dem-leaning Independents - are voting earlier than the more traditional Republican voters who wait... except those early voting numbers show a near-level balance of Dem and GOP voters. So that narrative's a bit off.

The implications I'm seeing are 1) this is how the voting trends are going, and 2) there's a shocking number of Republican voters adding to that 63 percent Harris lead that can't be ignored.

So (dammit, my giddiness is getting the better of me), we are within the realm of positing a "What If": What if Harris really is getting close to 63 percent of the national vote this November?

One thing we shouldn't do is speculate on the final turnout numbers. Although there's signs of increased voter registration, there's still no guarantee of increased voter turnout (although the turnout numbers did go up in 2020 due to excessive use of mail-in ballots that made it easier to do so).

So let's go by the 2020 total turnout count, which was 158,429,631 Americans.

If that percentage trend (63) persists for Harris, she's looking at roughly 99,810,667 votes.

(jaw drops)

Considering Biden got roughly 51 percent and a total of 81,283,501 votes, I'd say that's a huge boost to the collective Democratic ego.

By comparison, trump's possible 34 percent will garner around 53,866,704 votes. It will be a decided drop off from the 74,223,975 he got in 2020 and also below his 2016 numbers of 62,984,828. It would be a massive rejection by voters tired of trump's antics the third time around.

Not only would the percentage difference be huge (Harris will win by 29 percent) but the vote total will be embarrassing (Harris will win by 45,943,963 votes). trump and the Republicans will try to scream "stolen votes," but on a scale that large there's no way even Far Right judges will buy that (or risk challenging it). 

(Also: Try imagining trump calling the Georgia Secretary of State and begging him to "find me 45 million votes.")

It would be a legitimate blowout for a Presidential election, something we haven't seen in decades. Looking back, the next closest election with that huge a percentage win gap was in 1984 when Reagan demolished Mondale 58 to 40 percent. Reagan won the Electoral votes of 49(!) states with roughly 54 million over 37 million. There's a reason why Democrats have campaigned with little joy until now, and that smackdown inflicted a ton of PTSD for years afterward.

You could consider Nixon's victory in 1972 over McGovern one of the biggest results in all of U.S. history - where he won 60 percent over McGovern's 37 for a massive popular vote win 47 million over 29 million - but then you have to remember Nixon and his CREEPs orchestrated a dirty tricks campaign to guarantee running against a massively unpopular McGovern.

The most recent Democratic win on this scale would be in 1964, with LBJ riding on Kennedy's legacy and against an (then) extreme conservative opponent in Goldwater where Johnson got 61 percent over Goldwater's 38 percent and a 43 million over 27 million popular vote turnout. 

I could go back to 1936 when FDR blew Alf Landon out of the water with a 60 percent vs. 36 percent result, but you get my drift. Harris getting 63 percent would top every other electoral trouncing to achieve a Blowout For the Ages. Even if that percentage slides down, if she's anywhere near Reagan's 58 percent turnout we're still talking a huge win trump and the GOP can't lie about.

One other thing that accompanied those big blowouts in 1984, 1972, 1964, and 1936 (and even the milder landslides we'd see from Eisenhower's 1952-1956 wins for example) were the Electoral College results (maps are from the 270towin website):

It would be pretty to see a Harris/Walz Electoral Map where most of the United States will color in as Blue...

I would argue that back in those days the geographic divisions between Democratic and Republican - or Liberal and Conservative - voters were not as severe as we have today. Back then, the states were pretty well mixed between the major parties, and moderates between them would slide one election to the next between candidates without fear of being disloyal. 

You could get an Electoral College map that would overexaggerate the popular vote wins because the winning candidate got past the bare minimum to win there (Mondale almost lost his home state in 1984 by 2000 votes! And we know how Hillary lost Wisconsin and Michigan by similar margins to our detriment...). In today's partisan environment - and where liberals and conservatives relocated to states more attuned to their worldviews - it's not as likely for Harris to flip so many states Democratic the way LBJ and FDR did in their day. 

Having said that, if Harris is garnering - and keeping - 63 percent of voters by Election Day, that HAS to mean a large number of once-solid Republicans are abandoning their partisan stance (at least for this cycle), and across a number of otherwise solid Republican-held Red states to where a massive Electoral College win is in the pipeline. Not just Harris keeping the states Biden won in 2020, and not just flipping key battleground states like North Carolina and maybe Florida, and not just the almost-real possibility of finally flipping Texas: I'm talking nearly every Red state could be in play with those numbers (save for of course deep Red states like West Virginia, South Carolina, Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho). Dear 9 readers of this blog: Even ALASKA is in play.

...

Okay, with all THAT said, this "What If" fantasy is pretty to think so, but in the real world my track record for predicting things hasn't been all that great to begin with.

Like I said near the beginning of this wishful thinking, that early 63 percent lead can easily slide down as more voters show up and if more of them are leaning Republican and trump. The trend may look nice but actual voter turnout is what counts, and the early pro-Harris counts from Republican voters could just be that voting bloc getting their ballots done before they change their minds.

But... given that a sizable GOP voter bloc IS voting Harris and getting away from the once-rigid partisan voting habits, we ought to consider the reality that Harris is getting way above the now-standard 50-to-52 percent of winning we've seen in recent cycles. Even if Harris matches the more modest result of Obama's big win in 2008 of 53 percent, we're talking 83 million votes (a nice boost over 2020) and numbers that trump can't challenge.

Voter turnout remains key, fellow Americans.

We need 99 million or so of y'all to show up and vote Harris/Walz for the blowout we need to keep America free from trumpian misrule.

This is what 99 million Harris votes could look like

Let's do this.

Beltway Cowards

Whatever happened to the courage of the Washington Post?

News broke today about one of the major providers of news, as word got out that the Washington Post publisher squashed a planned endorsement for Kamala Harris for President, going with a weak "no endorsement" message that violates the editorial freedom that the newspaper enjoyed for decades. Via David Folkenflik at NPR:

Even though the presidential race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris is neck and neck, The Washington Post has decided not to make a presidential endorsement for the first time in 36 years, the publisher and CEO announced Friday.

"We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates," Will Lewis wrote in an opinion piece published on the paper's website. He referenced the paper's policy in the decades prior to 1976, when, following the Watergate scandal that the Post broke, it endorsed Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter. The last time the Post did not endorse a presidential candidate in the general election was 1988, according to a search of its archives.

If the WaPo refused to endorse in 1988, it happened at a time and between candidates - Bush the Elder and Mike Dukakis - where the stakes weren't at severe as today. What's galling is that the editors of the paper were working on an actual endorsement, only to get shut down by their paymaster:

Colleagues learned the news from the editorial page editor, David Shipley, at a tense meeting shortly before Lewis' announcement. The meeting was characterized by two people with direct knowledge of discussions on condition of anonymity to speak about internal matters.

Shipley had approved an editorial endorsement for Harris that was being drafted earlier this month, according to three people with direct knowledge. He told colleagues the decision was to endorse was being reviewed by the paper's billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos. That's the owner's prerogative and is a common practice...

But had newspaper owners before stepped in like this? I don't recall anything from the 1988 non-endorsement situation where the owner intervened. If it happened back then, it should have led to massive rebukes and resignations, because the independent decision-making and integrity of the editors and reporters would have been disrespected beyond repair. (Personal note, I was in Journalism school at UF at the time, and if that had happened we'd have been discussing the consequences for months afterward.)

Colleagues were said to be "shocked" and uniformly negative. Editor-at-large Robert Kagan, who has been highly critical of Trump as autocratic, told NPR he had resigned from the editorial board as a consequence.

Former Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron, who led the newsroom to acclaim during Trump's presidency, denounced the decision starkly.

"This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty," Baron said in a statement to NPR. "Donald Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos (and other media owners). History will mark a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for courage."

The Washington Post Guild, which represents newsroom employees and other staff, posted a message on Twitter saying it was concerned about management's interference in the journalism, considering that the editorial board already had drafted a statement of support for Harris.

"We are already seeing cancellations from once loyal readers," the statement said.

The Post isn't the only paper committing journalistic malpractice on this matter. The Los Angeles Times - one of the major West Coast papers for the second-largest metro in the United States - also had their owner/publisher interfering with any editorial decision to support a presidential choice. That move did lead to major resignations (via the AP News):

The editorials editor of the Los Angeles Times has resigned after the newspaper’s owner blocked the editorial board’s plans to endorse Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris for president, a journalism trade publication reported Wednesday.

Mariel Garza told the Columbia Journalism Review in an interview that she resigned because the Times was remaining silent on the contest in “dangerous times.”

“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent,” Garza said. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up...”

Garza told the Columbia Journalism Review that the board had intended to endorse Harris and she had drafted the outline of a proposed editorial.

An L.A. Times spokesperson did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

The L.A. Times Guild Unit Council & Bargaining Committee said it was “deeply concerned about our owner’s decision to block a planned endorsement in the presidential race.”

“We are even more concerned that he is now unfairly assigning blame to Editorial Board members for his decision not to endorse,” the guild said in a statement. “We are still pressing for answers from newsroom management on behalf of our members.”

Two other editors followed Garza out the door over this scandal, and I'm willing to bet the remaining editors are struggling to keep whatever remains of their staff from open rebellion.

The New York Times - the other major newspaper of record - hasn't even come out with an endorsement which is shocking seeing we're barely ten days away from the actual election and deep into Early Voting across most of the country. The silence from that editorial board - which has shown a sickening habit of whitewashing sanewashing everything trump's ever done even in the 1980s! - is deafening.

These media outlets may claim - or in the New York Times' case, they may yet claim - they aren't supporting either candidate, but by their (in)action these papers' owners and publishers are giving trump their silent consent. They refuse to acknowledge the many flaws - the felony convictions, the fraud liability, the judicial finding he committed rape, the many other criminal charges he still faces - that establish how unqualified - how inhuman - trump is for high office. They willfully ignore the many crimes trump committed and are signing off on all the crimes trump threatens to commit if he ever regains control.

These billionaires owning our newspapers and media outlets want trump to win: They know they won't get harmed in trump's promised autocratic regime, and care only for the massive tax cuts trump and the Republicans will ensure. They also know that if they refuse to support Kamala or any other Democratic candidate they won't get political backlash or punishment for it, because by their own nature Democrats are not bullies like trump and the Far Right.

The Beltway media - from the New York Times to the L.A. Times and now the Washington Post - have been washing away every sin and flaw trump committed and continues to commit on the national stage, both as a corrupt businessman and now as a corrupt political disaster.

The national media should be defending the nation from trump instead of surrendering to his threats.

Cowards. Every single one.

Update: Even the Post's columnists disagree with Bezos' and Lewis' decision.

The Washington Post’s decision not to make an endorsement in the presidential campaign is a terrible mistake. It represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love, and for which we have worked a combined 218 years. This is a moment for the institution to be making clear its commitment to democratic values, the rule of law and international alliances, and the threat that Donald Trump poses to them — the precise points The Post made in endorsing Trump’s opponents in 2016 and 2020. There is no contradiction between The Post’s important role as an independent newspaper and its practice of making political endorsements, both as a matter of guidance to readers and as a statement of core beliefs. That has never been more true than in the current campaign. An independent newspaper might someday choose to back away from making presidential endorsements. But this isn’t the right moment, when one candidate is advocating positions that directly threaten freedom of the press and the values of the Constitution.

It's co-signed by Perry Bacon Jr., E.J. Dionne Jr., David Ignatius, Ruth Marcus, Dana Milbank, Catherine Rampell, Eugene Robinson, Jennifer Rubin, and Karen Tumulty.

I'm screen-capturing it in case Lewis or Bezos decide to wash this away as well.

The Washington Post likes to advertise that "Democracy Dies in Darkness" as part of their marketing, but today the goddamned cowards turned off the lights.

Update Also: I've been told the New York Times Op-Ed endorsed Kamala Harris back in September, back when people - myself included - weren't paying much attention. It still doesn't excuse the paper's overall willingness to sanewash trump's open racist extremism and calls to violence.

This Is It. Early Voting Begins for 2024.

Early voting started in a number of states already, and while the turnout is higher than expected in several of them - North Carolina and Georgia especially - there's not really any hope that this turnout favors the Democrats over the evil that is MAGA trump.

We're in the final lap of this damned election cycle, yet another horse race for a national media that treats it all like a game while the rest of us living in the real world are terrified of the outcomes. I've been here before - on the edge of a war none of us can escape - we all have, and our nerves are as frayed as my friend Emily's:

So I've been feeling anxious & a little paralyzed about a lot of things that I very much have no control over & I'm trying to remember that I have no control over those things but I can have input. Election Day is coming up FAST. We can't control the outcome, but we can have input. Here's one way ⬇️

[image or embed]

— Emily L. Hauser (@emilylhauser.bsky.social) October 20, 2024 at 1:11 AM

If we existed in a nation that wasn't coping with a broken Electoral College system - and a voting system vulnerable to trumpian sabotage - maybe we'd be feeling more calm and saner heading towards Election Day. 

All we can control - each of us, in the corners of America where we live - is making sure we can get out to vote when we can - for example early voting to avoid the lines on Election Day for those who haven't gotten mail-in ballots - and then making sure within our circle of friends - the ones voting for Kamala Harris and for Democratic Senators and for Democratic Representatives and for Democratic State officials - also get their votes in when they can.

I would recommend getting to early voting if you're in battleground states especially ones where trump and his RNC lackeys are threatening to send in "poll workers" to delay, derail, or deny voters their right to vote on November 5th itself. It's harder for them to do it at the Early Voting locations due to the likelihood of interfering with NPA or GOP voters (they're hoping to sabotage the Democratic-heavy precincts filled with ethnic and youth voters).

The Republicans do not trust the actual majority of voters: They themselves are a minority party using suppression and gerrymandering to give them political power they don't deserve. The best way to stop the GOP from sabotaging - overwhelming the zone with their shit - is to overwhelm the ballot boxes with actual voters voting against that shit.

We can do this America.

Vote Democratic Party across the board. Deny trump and his Far Right cohort any victory everywhere.

Florida 2024 General Election Ballot: LET'S EFFING GOOOOO

So here I am coping with the outer bands of Hurricane Milton crossing overhead, finding the Sample Ballot for the 2024 general election sitting in my mailbox.

I don't do mail-in, I tend to vote on Election Day itself, but in the meantime here's the information my fellow Polk County residents need and for my fellow Floridians to consider whenever they submit their votes to the ballot boxes.

(The nine regular readers of this blog probably already know how this is gonna play, but it doesn't hurt to refresh)

President

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AMERICA APPLE PIE AND EVERYONE YOU HOLD DEAR: do NOT vote trump. Considering everything I've written in the past eight years, my tune has not changed. trump is the most dangerous, self-absorbed, greedy, wrong-headed, racist, sexist, hate-driven son of a bitch this nation ever produced.

On the positive side, Kamala Harris has a record and reputation for competency, empathy, focus, commitment, sheer will. There is every GOOD reason to vote for Kamala.

Ballz to the Walz, people.

Meanwhile, RFK Jr is noticeably not on the ballot - which is funny in its own way - but he is on the ballot in other states, desperately trying to draw votes away from the Democratic tickets. Pay him no mind: His anti-vaxxing stance and his troubling personal misdeeds make him unlikeable to the liberal base. I'm asking all the independent voters (or the ones thinking to hold a protest vote re: Israel's genocide of Gaza) to just don't. The primary objective is to not give trump any advantage. HE'S the real threat.

Senate

There is a Senate seat open this cycle, the one occupied by Rick "Medicare Fraud" Scott who is most deserving to get kicked out of it. Partly because it'll be funny to watch his ambitions to become the Senate Republican caucus leader crumble to ash; Mostly because Scott has been a terrible Senator and a destructive presence in Floridian politics.

Running against him on the Democratic ticket is Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a one-term congresswoman (who had won as part of the 2018 Blue Wave) with a background in academics and social work. She's mostly focused on gun background checks and relief efforts for Venezuelan refugees. She's solid and she's cool. VOTE FOR HER.

Congress

There's 28 House seats up for election in the state of Florida and 20 of those districts are ridiculously gerrymandered towards Republicans (Go FUCK yourself, DeSantis) so it would be an absolute delight if enough Democratic and Indy voters turned out the vote to where Democratic candidates can win about 14 or 15 of those seats to give DeSatan BOTH middle fingers. Please and Thank You.

If there's good news, it's that state party leader Nikki Fried worked to get a Democratic challenger in every congressional district, giving local voters incentives to show up and vote. So let's do that, Florida. Flip the Sunshine State Blue.

State Legislature

I know it's hard going at the state level, but with every House seat up for vote and half the state Senate seats up for vote, it sure would be nice for Democratic turnout to break the near-absolute hold the Republicans have held on Tallahassee since the 1990s. Given all the lobbyist corruption and calcification - the failures by the GOP to fix our homeowner insurance regulations and lowering of costs has become painful to residents and HOAs across the state - we need a shift in the power alignments to force through needed reforms that one-party rule will never seek. This is serious, Floridians. Pay attention to the state officials who need to get swept out of the legislature for failing to serve our needs.

State Supreme Court

Our state uses a retention voting process for appellate and Supreme Court positions, and in this cycle two state Justices - Renatha Francis and Meredith Sasso - are up for consideration after being on the bench one year (retention will earn them a six-year term). 

Both Francis and Sasso are DeSantis appointees: On that alone, voting them out would be a huge - and deserved - black mark on DeSantis' standing. Francis in fact was denied an earlier appointment to the high bench back in 2020 (!) but it was more procedural - she hadn't been on the state bar for the 10-year requirement - than political. However, Francis has had a troubled history as a circuit judge even before her appointment in 2023, and she was clearly a partisan hire.

Both Francis and Sasso were part of the ruling upholding a horrific "six-week ban" - which is medically impossible - and dissented on the decision to allow the Abortion referendum - which would codify women's rights to get the health care they need, undoing that six week ban and requiring more sensible state laws - so their position on abortion rights are pretty clear. Kick them off the bench, vote No. While it's likely DeSantis will replace them with other Far Right appointees, the signal needs to be sent to the Republicans that Floridians want their rights over our own persons upheld.

County Sheriff

For Polk, it means Grady Judd is up for re-election (where are the damn term limits?) but at least this cycle he's facing a challenger in Theodore Murray. Judd, I swear, is more of a media hog than DeSantis, and whether he's good at his job or not he's been in that seat for too long (five terms since 2004!). Vote for Murray. It's time for fresh leadership.

Supervisor of Elections

Well, Lori Edwards does such a good job of mailing out notices and providing information and offering proper electoral services. Also she's NPA and the other choice is a Republican. Keep up the good work, Lori!

State Amendments

I've posted about the 2024 referenda earlier, but here's a recap:

Amendment One is allowing Partisan School Board elections. I'm of a mind to allow it because it means we'll see who the Far Right Republicans support, but the common consensus is that this will make an already fraught electioneering for vital community offices - especially as the wingnuts are warring on teen reading and trans students - more combative. I was leaning the other way - not because I'm pro-Party but because I'm pro-:Let's See Who The Crooks Are" - but by now I've decided to vote No on this.

Amendment Two is over the Right to Hunt and Fish, which would open up more hunting seasons - and hunting targets - across Florida. This would be a massive disruption to already fragile ecosystems and a severe threat to many of the endangered animals still in our open lands. This ought to be a huge No from all us voters.

Amendment Three is to Legalize Marijuana for recreational use. We had a medicinal use amendment pass earlier, but now - especially as the federal government is looking to reschedule pot as a lesser banned substance - there's the need to reduce the criminalization and incarceration that's become a gross injustice in our War on Drugs. Again, I don't encourage drug use, but I also don't see why we're over-pursuing punishments for a non-lethal drug like marijuana. We should be treating pot use as a health issue, not a criminal one. I'm a Yes on this one.

Amendment Four is the biggie: Protecting Abortion Rights for women. This would enforce the right of access to the medical procedure for women at-risk and ensure the bans are set at more appropriate time limits (say 23 weeks instead of 6). DeSantis and the other hard-liners are fearmongering like crazy to stop this one from passing, but it's polling above the 60 percent supermajority needed to pass and in order to save the lives of thousands of at-risk women we need to vote Yes for this.

Amendment Five is another Homestead Exemption bill, this time to Adjust exemptions to Annual Inflation. It'll basically use the Cost of Living Index to increase tax cuts to homeowners with dire impact to city and county governments that NEED property tax revenues to balance their budgets. This is a hard No, even coming from a Florida homeowner, because I'm tired of these Republican tricks to gut tax revenues.

Amendment Six offers to Repeal Public Financing for Statewide Campaigns, which would essentially allow PACs and dark money to overtake the costly campaigning at the state level where candidates who can't afford to run will be shit out of luck. We need to go the other way and require public financing for ALL campaigns, to get the goddamn corrupt forces of lobbyists and the uber-rich dominating our electoral choices. This should be a hard No, everyone.

Polk County Amendments

There is one item for the county Charter - Merging the Efficiency Commission to the Charter Review Commission - which would clear out some of the committee requirements and extend the Efficiency commission's work cycle from 8 years to 12 years. I don't know, this doesn't seem all that efficient to prevent the commission from working in closer cycles to keep up with the constant changes and demands on county services and resources. This could increase the bureaucratic logjam instead of lessening it. I'm inclined to vote No unless someone can show me honest projections of costs and improvement.

Pasco County Mosquito Control Board

You know, when I lived in Pasco County this was a big deal. I even had people show up on this blog because it was the only thing posting any information about the choices. Well, alas, I don't live there anymore so I can't be sure. I do know there's two seats open (One and Three), all of the candidates are from New Port Richey (seriously, Land O Lakes?) this cycle and the best I would suggest is voting for the candidates with the coolest names (owstophittingme).

--

As I wrap this up, the hurricane weather is picking up, I'm hearing thunderstorms in the distance, and I know damn well the local McDonalds is closed. Gods help me, Milton is coming.

If I don't make it out: Promise me. PROMISE ME NED. Promise you will vote Kamala Harris and Democratic party straight down the ballot. Promise me, Floridians, to vote Yes on Amendment 4 to save women's lives.

I hope to see you at the ballot this November.

What Trump Threatens

Update: Thank you Steve In Manhattan for including this article at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. I hope to see you all on the other side of Hurricane Milton as I'll be hunkering down in central Florida. If I don't make it... PLEASE get out all the votes for Harris/Walz and make sure trump goes away for good. And if I do make it... PLEASE get out all the votes for Harris/Walz and make sure trump goes away for good! Peace.

The hope is that the popular vote support for Kamala Harris - much like for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 - outpaces the vote for donald trump and that Kamala's numbers are strong enough like Joe's to win in convincing fashion with the Electoral College. trump has done nothing in his 2024 campaign to boost his standing with voters - he remains incredibly unpopular as of October 4th - to where it's unlikely he will ever win the popular vote.

What's troubling is how broken the Electoral College system is, to where trump can either repeat the upset he gained in 2016 or worse create enough chaos disrupting vote-counting to crash the election altogether.

American voters need to understand what's at stake here. People need to remember how disastrous trump was in the White House between 2017 through January 2021. We need to realize how trump threatens to be so much worse if he ever regains the presidency.

I know this will get long-winded, but know this:

trump threatens the entire concept of the Rule of Law. Just by his very existence. Never in our history - should trump bully, cheat, and lie his way into the White House - has a convicted felon reached the high office of the presidency. We had Eugene Debs running for it back in 1920 but he never stood a chance. We've had bad men, men with questionable morals at best - Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, LBJ, Nixon - as President but never before someone with 34 guilty counts from a New York jury and facing more felonies once the election passes. We will have a lawless criminal in a position to avoid legal judgment, willing to break even more laws - now that the Supreme Court made sitting Presidents virtually untouchable - to ensure he never answers for his crimes.

And trump will extend that lawlessness to exact revenge on his enemies, whomever he feels was responsible for "humiliating" him with these charges and convictions. he turned the Department of Justice - especially under William Barr - into an instrument of his vengeance, seeking any means to bring Hillary Clinton to trial over her accusing him of illegal ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign. In his second term, trump will go after everyone - Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Hillary again, Obama, even Republicans like Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney who opposed trump in the public arena - he thinks wronged him. trump will even use the presidency to destroy the prosecutors, judges, and juries who held him liable in civil trials and guilty in the New York criminal trial. E. Jean Carroll will be the target of his darkest ire. 

trump will do everything he can to wipe clean the documented history of his sins, and will punish everyone to do so.

trump threatens the rights and welfare - the very lives - of women across the board. Thanks to trump's tenure between 2017 to 2021, the Republicans placed three Far Right anti-abortion Justices on the Supreme Court, the culmination of their 50-year war to undo the Roe V Wade ruling in 2022. They did this to appease their Culture War supporters, but doing so was an unpopular move. This 2024, the Republicans - trump included - are trying to hide their responsibility for taking away women's personal rights, but it's an open secret the Far Right want a total national ban on abortion - and even all forms of birth control - and trump will happily sign that kind of legislation for them.

You can tell trump is still eager to push for stricter abortion bans because he's spreading bald-faced lies about "post-birth abortions" happening in Democratic-led states that he conveniently won't name. You know his campaign is looking to curtail women's rights with his Vice Presidential pick JD Vance out there attacking "childless cat ladies" and insisting women should be at home in the kitchen birthing babies.

trump back in the White House means more women will find themselves punished in some form or another - hit with "childless" taxes, pushed out of the workplace, squeezed out of higher education grants/scholarships, gods help us even directly attacked by wingnut community groups looking to punish and conform - in order to force women - White and Young (even high-school age!) - into life roles they didn't want.

trump and his Republican allies will take away women's rights. This is not fearmongering: This is fact.

trump threatens the rights and safety of Latino / Black / Asian / Arab communities, even the ones who are citizens and legal residents. We know this already: trump has been openly racist and unapologetic about it for decades. We also know what trump did during his tenure: One of the first official acts of his administration was imposing a travel ban on people from the Middle East, creating a massive outcry and incredible burdens on families and foreign allies. We know trump created harsher policies dealing with illegals crossing the southern border, pushing a family separation policy that ruined thousands of families, and led to the disappearance of hundreds of children (did we ever find ALL of them?).

A second trump administration will be worse. It's already public that trump's strongest anti-immigration ally Stephen Miller wants to deport 20 million alleged illegals and migrants, something on a scale beyond even previous attempts by hardline administrations (I will not repeat the name of that operation here, it was blatant racism). The horrifying thing is that based on reports there's not 20 million illegals - it might not even be 11 million - so if trump implements this agenda he will be forcing our government - trump wants to use military force to do it as well, an unconstitutional abuse - into rounding up thousands if not millions of legal U.S. residents all because of their skin color and lack of ID (and for those with ID the accusation those records are fake). We will be seeing the most vulnerable group of that getting targeted: Our children, our teens, our young adults rounded up and punished for trump's nativist rage. This will be the Republican Party - no, worse, the United States because we let this happen - at their our most cruel.

trump threatens to undo our nation's economic stability with his obsession to shift from income taxes to massive tariffs. Even after all the shocks to American industries and markets that trump's tariffs caused during his tenure, he's obsessed with the (false) belief that tariffs worked wonders in our nation's history - he's been pumping up the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890 as a (bad) example - and wants to make it so that all the taxation is done via tariffs. In spite of all the evidence - and basic understanding of economics - that tariffs place higher burdens on the poor while the rich get richer even as products get scarcer and more expensive. 

trump and his lackeys do not care that the last time we had massive tariffs put in place - the Smoot-Hawley Act - it made the economic crisis in 1930 go from a standard panic to THE GREAT DEPRESSION. Never mind the trade wars trump will trigger with other nations (depending on if trump uses the threat of tariffs to make those nations or industries pay him off). all trump cares about is ending taxes on incomes and dividends for the uber-rich. Everyone else will lose jobs, lose homes, lose lives.

And that's just on tariffs. trump's threatening to shift our reliance on the US dollar to cryptocurrency (his, no doubt). 

trump threatens to undo the federal government itself. Do some reading on "Project 2025," which had public ties to trump's presidential campaign until people took notice and recoiled in horror (forcing them to hide from the spotlight). trump's railing against the "Deep State" and proposals to "Drain the Swamp" will all lead to undoing the civil service merit system that's been in place since Garfield's assassination. Replacing around 50,000 workers throughout the federal government - who oversee regulations, enforce policy, deal with vendor contracts, provide public services - with trump loyalists who will ignore policy and procedure and do whatever trump tells them. It'll promote corruption - especially with contract biddings and deregulation of workplace safety and protections - on a scale we haven't seen since the Spoils System.

For all the griping by conservatives and libertarians, the federal agencies overall provide good - if slow or bureaucratic - services to the public at large. I've had people come to my library needing help with Social Security disability filings, and they've told me the local SSA offices treated them well and got them on the right programs. Our national parks are beloved and enjoyed. Travelers may gripe about the TSA but we know it's a price to pay for airline travel security. For all the complaints about the IRS, most Americans accept the responsibility of paying taxes and few are ever burdened with audits or accounting errors. There's 100 other agencies in the Executive branch and most of them function as intended because they tend to hire the right people for the jobs.

All of that would go away if trump and his lackeys purge the civil service and install their own cronies. Good customer service - yes, it's practiced by federal agencies - will disappear. Access to funds and grants will fall into a rabbit hole feeding to trump's pockets (or the pockets of corrupt allies). People who were hired based on actual experience and merit will get replaced by those without relative experience or even interest in doing the job properly.

The Far Right has been looking to take a sledgehammer to a federal government they hate because it doesn't play favorites - meaning it doesn't favor only themselves - when doling out funds to poor farmers regardless of race, aiding small businesses regardless of race, or regulating business practices to reduce consumer fraud (also affecting people by race, age, and gender). trump will be willing to swing that sledgehammer at our nation's foundation just so he can profit from the ruins.

trump threatens to end American diplomacy and strong ties to Western (aka anti-Russian) republics / democracies. trump will do this not only to appease his idol/BFF Vladimir Putin, he will do this to punish our European and Asian allies he knows mocked and derided him during his tenure.

It won't be like last time, when trump tried to shakedown NATO members to pay the United States - to pay himself - like a protection racket. If trump returns to the White House, he will exact revenge not only with his tariff wars but through acts of retaliation through breaking treaties and mutual pacts (trump loves to break existing deals because he can then force people to renegotiate with him directly, increasing his chances of personal profit). Given trump's open love for Putin and Russia, we can well expect trump to follow through on forcing the United States to leave NATO, exposing nations like Poland, Germany, and the Baltic states to Russian hegemony.

If trump does force us to leave NATO, he could force our military and State Department to forge ties to Russia as a new "ally" but in truth expose us to Russian takeover of foreign policy and military capability. Anything Putin wants - even some of our best technology and resources - trump will hand over without question. Granted, there will be massive pushback by everyone - even fellow Republicans - horrified by such moves, but if trump succeeds in corrupting the civil service with loyalists the debates will be short-lived and silenced.

We need to remember how trump's mishandling of classified information - a lot of it shared from and with our allies - was a major scandal even before he was caught with boxes of high-level intel at his Mar-A-Lago residence. If trump returns to the Oval Office, he can and will demand every classified document pass through his hands because he will believe he owns those materials, to the horror and disgust of our intelligence personnel if any survive the civil service purge. Our allied nations - NATO and otherwise, even Israel - will refuse to share any further intel with us, straining our foreign relations to where the unthinkable - the end of once-strong centuries-old alliances that provided trade, travel, and trust - will happen. Isolationism wouldn't even begin to define it.

No matter what, trump in office will mean Ukraine is screwed against Russia's invasion. 

In short: trump threatens everything and everyone - even his own followers - because trump only wants to serve himself at our expense. It will be American Fascism - all in service to Overlord TRUMP and his handlers/lackeys/brute squads.

I know I keep saying this, but for the LOVE of everything - God, America, Freedom, Mom and Apple Pie - do not vote for donald trump or his Republican allies. Please vote for Kamala Harris as President, please vote for every Democratic candidate on the ballots, please vote for every Pro-Women amendment referendum in the states offering them.

Do not let trump and his kind threaten us any longer.

"Make Them Riot": trump Needs to Answer for his Insurrection

On the personal notes, mom's doing okay in the hospital but she's stressed out because dad's in hospice care and she feels she needs to be at home taking care of him. Mom, you're the one with the cracked skull and broken wrist... 

While donald trump won't face the criminal trial before the November general election, the court case focused on his role in the January 6th Insurrection is still proceeding; and got to the point where the special prosecutor Jack Smith presented evidence that's going to be used in that trial. To say that's it damning is an understatement (via Carrie Johnson and Ryan Lucas at NPR):

In a newly unsealed court filing, special counsel Jack Smith provides the most detailed picture yet of his criminal case against Donald Trump for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election and why the former president isn't immune from prosecution.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the case, released the filing, with minor redactions, on Wednesday.

A link to the court documents is here. The redactions for what they're worth are mostly hiding names of trump and his alleged co-conspirators/handlers... which hasn't stopped people from matching them based on the evidence that's already out there.

The special counsel uses the 165-page document to make his case that Trump's actions around the election were made in a private capacity and not in his official role as president.

The filing comes after the Supreme Court ruled this summer that presidents enjoy broad immunity for official acts while in office, but not for unofficial acts as a candidate or a private citizen.

"When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office," the special counsel's team writes. "With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost..."

The broad strokes of the special counsel's allegations against Trump have long been known. The filing, though, adds some new details, including sensitive testimony from witnesses and notes taken by former Vice President Mike Pence...

Getting into those details highlighted the lengths to which trump and his cohorts attempted to sabotage, hinder, or destroy the 2020 general election results. The Politico website counted multiple seriously deranged and illegal acts (via Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein):

According to prosecutors, at one point during Trump’s bid to overturn the results, a Trump White House aide overheard Trump tell his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner: “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.” The comment was allegedly made on Marine One.

Prosecutors said they would prove at trial that Trump and his allies often made up statistics about voter fraud “from whole cloth.” For example, Trump and allies alleged that 36,000 noncitizens had cast ballots in Arizona, changing the figure to “a few hundred thousand” five days later, eventually revising it back to “bare minimum … 40 or 50,000,” then to 32,000 and back up to the original number of 36,000.

One week after Election Day in 2020, Trump told then-Gov. Doug Ducey (R-Ariz.) that he was “packaging up” fraud evidence to share with him, prosecutors wrote. But Trump never provided it. Ducey told Trump that Arizona was all but lost, comparing it to being in “the ninth inning, two outs, and [the defendant] was several runs down,” Smith’s brief recounted...

Never mind that there's already laws to ensure non-citizens can't vote, trump was still using his fearmongering over immigrants to justify overturning legit election results. He and his team kept fibbing the numbers to whatever they needed in that moment to claim whatever victory trump could. And when it came time to present evidence, they never did. Because it was never real. Goddamn him.

Prosecutors, who had more access to telephone records and emails than the congressional committee that investigated Jan. 6, allege that Trump spoke to ally Steve Bannon by phone on Jan. 5 less than two hours before Bannon issued a prescient and provocative prediction on his War Room podcast that “all hell is going to break loose” on Jan. 6...

Well before Jan. 6, an unidentified Trump campaign employee enthusiastically spoke of the potential for a riot in Michigan. The employee, whom prosecutors described as a co-conspirator, allegedly sought to “create chaos” at a polling center in Detroit when it became clear a batch of election returns favorable to Biden was legitimate. “Find a reason it isn’t,” the alleged co-conspirator said to a colleague, prosecutors wrote. When the colleague said an outbreak of violence appeared imminent, the campaign employee replied: “Make them riot” and “Do it!!!”

These are the tidbits that prove trump and his people wanted a riot, all the riots across battleground states as well as the Capitol, in order to disrupt and destroy the results, so he could steal the election and stay in power. trump's "rally" on January 6th was never going to be peaceful: It was a call to violence.

It's terrifying that trump is not going to sit in a courtroom and answer for his misdeeds before the November 5th election day. It's insane that the Republican Party refused to stop trump from forcing himself back atop their ballot, because now we're facing the possibility trump can steal (he can't win the popular vote, at best he can skew the Electoral College or at worst throw the results into chaos) the presidential election.

If trump gets back into the Oval Office he will squash this and every other criminal investigation into his actions. trump will deny New York the 34-count felony conviction and destroy the entire concept of "justice for all" for the nation for all time. We will have a confirmed felon and sex offender as President and he will inflict his criminal passions upon the nation and the world.

This isn't up to the courts anymore: Chief Justice Roberts made certain of that.

This is up to us voters, all of us from Democrats to Independents to even Republicans who respect the rule of law and despise trump and what he stands for.

For all the efforts to suppress voters - for all the lies about who's voting - the Republicans can't win if everyone shows up to vote and NOT vote for them. If the numbers are overwhelming in favor of Democrats - in favor of the pro-choice referendums on many state ballots - the Far Right wingnuts trying to sabotage the results won't have any legal leg to stand on. They would - and should - fail in many of the courtrooms even to the point where trump's own compliant Supreme Court can't save him.

Get the vote out, America. Every single one of us who sees trump for what he is - a failed, corrupt criminal - and who sees Republicans for what they are - broken, fear-driven rage merchants living in their own conspiracy bubbles desperate to rule or ruin - need to show up this election cycle. Be it by mail-in ballot, be it by early voting, be it by standing in line this Tuesday November 5th: We need to show up and vote. Our vote matters. Our vote is our power.

We need to stop trump from committing more crimes, and our vote for Harris/Walz and the Democrats across every seat on the ballots will do that.

Good luck.

My One Sentence Thoughts About Judge Merchan Delaying trump's New York Felony Sentencing Until After the 2024 General Election

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUCK. 

The Conservative Contempt for Women

As low as the Far Right Republican political agenda for 2024 can sink, it still keeps going in a downward spiral. Over the weekend, the media got wind of yet another interview VP candidate JD Vance gave where he exposed more misogyny towards women who did not fit his world-view (via Jason Wilson at the Guardian (US)): 

Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, said that professional women “choose a path to misery” when they prioritize careers over having children in a September 2021 podcast interview in which he also claimed men in America were “suppressed” in their masculinity.

The Ohio senator and vice-presidential candidate said of women like his classmates at Yale Law School that “pursuing racial or gender equity is like the value system that gives their life meaning … [but] they all find that that value system leads to misery”...

Ever since he was picked by Trump, Vance has been hit by scandals over his past comments, especially those concerning women and his perception of their role in society.

Last week his campaign was rocked by previous comments blasting a teachers union president for not having “some of her own” children. His previous characterizations of Democratic leaders as “childless cat ladies” have also troubled the Trump campaign’s efforts to appeal to suburban women.

Sophie Bjork-James, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University who has written extensively on topics including US evangelicals and populist politics, said: “Vance represents a new articulation of rightwing politics that is bridging the Christian right and a tech-influenced hypermasculine conservatism.

“He appeals to evangelicals with the message that we find happiness by fulfilling traditional gender roles, which is a cornerstone of white evangelical Christianity. He also speaks to a misogynist trend emerging out of the tech world among people who would prefer not to talk about any kind of diversity at all.”

“What they share is the view that women shouldn’t be in paid work: they should be in the home and rearing children. But the public line isn’t ‘we hate women’, it’s ‘women will be happier if they stay at home’,” she added.

The Guardian contacted the Vance campaign for comment but received no response...

As a man, JD Vance is trying hard to present himself as a patriarchal Alpha Male: dismissive of women's rights, projecting his own misery onto them, and refusing to express any basic decency at all. 

We've seen these Alpha Male wannabes - and their Incel cousins - running around on social media, showing off their "conquests", expressing their toxic mindsets, and acting out their dominance towards everyone they view as their lessers. 

Remember Andrew Tate, the preening jackass who advertises himself as a male role model and tried taunting a young woman about his prized gas guzzling sports cars... and ended up exposing himself to arrest by Romanian authorities pursuing him for abuse, fraud, and human sex trafficking? He resumed his public behavior as a misogynistic asshole even after that arrest, which all led to fresh arrests by Romanian officials now including sex trafficking of minors.

This is who these women-hating men are: They can't stop themselves from their attitudes that women - and the younger the better - are property, no different than the 16 cars Tate has to own to make himself feel superior to the rest of us. To these men, women are basically slaves to their whims and needs. They don't see women as half the human population, or as humans at all. Ask them if women have brains, these guys will laugh. Ask them if women have souls, these guys will shrug it off.

As human beings, Vance and his Alpha Male colleagues just keep proving themselves - and everything their world-view represents - vile and wrong.

It's not just Vance that's the problem. The guy who hired him as his vice presidential candidate - trump - is demonstrably worse. Above all, donald trump is officially a sex offender, found liable for sexual assault on E. Jean Carroll that the judge declared was by definition rape. There's the long history of trump abusing his "privileges" owning the Miss Teen USA pageants. There's the report he raped his first wife Ivana. There's trump himself proudly boasting he can grab women by the p-ssy in the most vulgar way possible.

And with all that, the so-called "family values" religious-type leadership of the Republican Party accepts trump - and Vance, and hundreds of other vulgar Alpha Male assholes - as their own. Because those "Christian" values aren't about family, or humility, or love.

This contempt, this rage, this violence towards women explains how deep into the rot the conservative ideology has fallen. 

This is who conservatives are, in service to their ideology that only the true elites - rich, white, and male - must rule. Remember what Frank Wilhoit said: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

Everyone else outside of their circle - the ethnic minorities like Blacks and Latinos (and even Asians), the youth, the poor, and now above all the women - must be shunned, defamed, disposed of.

Even those lessers who ARE in their circle - the conservative women (and Blacks and Latinos and Gays) in this case - who pander to this message of misogyny are just there to convince these men - if not those in the media looking for narrative cover - that they are ideologically in the right. The conservative women playing to the "tradwife" or anti-feminist stances are doing so because they personally profit - above all, the wealth and social influence - from living in the status quo that the conservative movement seeks to enforce. But the second these women are no longer valued for their contributions, they will find themselves in the same mess - poor, physically broken, emotionally drained - every other American woman suffers now.

Wonder why teacher's pay is so low across so many Republican-controlled states? It's because it's viewed as "women's work." Wonder why women's health care is declining across the nation? Because the bans on abortion - and the coming threat to birth control - are sending many OB/Gyns into retirement - and scaring potential new doctors out of the profession - before they can get criminally charged by ignorant wingnut politicians over basic women's health care.

If trump is trying to walk back the damage he'd done already over abortion - and health care in general - don't listen to him. Look at what he's doing. Look at who he's working with to promote even worse ills on the nation if he - and his cohort Vance - lie and steal their way back into the White House.

The Republican platform on women boils down to one word: SUFFER.

The cruelty remains the point.

For the Love of God and for the women in your lives, Stop Voting Republican.